— BAH
113
with
all his followers. The soldier saint was buried by some of his servants in the spot which he, had chosen for his resting place, and tradition avers that his head rests on the image of that sun the worship of which he gave his life to overthrow.
There can be but
doubt but that the expedition, an abstract of the account of which has just been given, was the preCursor, Or perhaps a part, of the invasion undertaken ^tion of Ahmad Nialin the Same year, 1033 A. D., by Abmad Nialtagin, a ° '. reputed son of Mahmud's. This general, who was appointed Governor of Hindustan, is related. to have "exacted ample tribute from the Th^kurs/' Crossing the river Ganges and marching down its left bank, he penetrated as far as Benares and returned to Lahore laden with spoil. little
This invasion connected with the expe-
There is a remarkable coincidence in the causes 'of the two expeditions as related in the "Mira-at-i-Masaudi" and the "Tarikh^. , inaTtVlTnvalTr us-Subuktagin" Written by Abul Fazl Baihaqi in .
the year 10.59 A. D., vtz., the enmity and jealousy of the chief minister of Mahmud Khwaja Hiisan, who naturally was quite willing to see his rivals despatched on such dangerous missions. Again, Sayyad Salar Masaud was the nephew of Mahmud, and Ahmad Nialtagin was his reputed son both were in high favour with the Sultan, and it would therefore be not at all surprising to find them making a joint expedition into Hindustan, to be free from their common enemy the Khwaja.
why Baihaqi makes no mention of Salar Masaud. Perhaps the reason may be found in WrsuLncrregarding *^® reluctance of the historian to record anything so disastrous as the results of this expedition, but in all Salar Masaud. the six copies of the " Tarikh-us-Subuktagin" that exist, a vacuum occurs immediately after the account of Ahmad Nialtagin's raid to Benares, and it is therefore not unreasonable to conclude that the last pages would have given us some account of Masaud's crusade. It is difficult, however, to explain
,
Section V.
Subsequent
Muhammadan
invasions
and
settlements.
Whatever may have been the immediate
effect of these invasions, it is clear that they did not give the Muhammadan power
«f ^^^ ^««t any permanent hold on the country, and it IS not until the middle of the thirteenth century that anything like a government was established in the trans-Gogra dis-
obfa^eZnttetunt^ry^
tricts.
ISTasir-ud-din Miihammad, elder son Sbams-ud-dm Altamsh, who was appointed
In ,1226 A. D. Malik
of Sultan to Oudh,
overthrew the accursed Bartuh (Bhars) under whose hands and swords more than one hundred and twenty thousand Musalmans had received martyrdom he overthrew the rebel infidels of Oudh and brought a body of them into submission,"* and it was doubtless under his auspices that the first colonies of Muhammadans settled in the south of the Bahraich district.
throws tlfeBhaT"
"
- Tabaqat-i-Nasiri
by Manhaj-ua-Siraj.
H
